Discussion Groups / British English / January 2008

I think the safest option is to refer to terraces as "terraces"
and the style of farming as "terrace farming", "farming on
terraces" or something like that.

There are regional and specialist terms in use in Britain, but
it would be wrong to apply these to anywhere else. Also they are
not well-known.

In Scotland and the North of England naturally occuring ledges
are sometimes called "run rigs" or "rigs".

The word "lynchet" is used in parts of England, and is a term
used by archaeologists.

OED (Oxford English Dictionary):

   lynchet

   2. A slope or terrace along the face of a chalk down.

      b. Archæol. A cultivation terrace.

   1796 Gentl. Mag. LXVI. 822/1 On the declivities of the
   elevated and chalky tracts of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and
   other counties, there very frequently occurs a beautiful
   assemblage of terraces, mostly horizontal, and rising in a
   continued series like the steps of Egyptian pyramids...
   These, which are commonly arable,..are popularly called
   lynchets... They are generally regarded in the neighbourhood
   as the offspring of human exertion in remote ages, to
   facilitate and extend the dominion of the plough.

John Briggs wrote...

Some interesting etymology here, perhaps. Chambers (1972) gives for "Hanging
garden" "a garden formed in terraces rising one above another," indicating a
greater affinity with the Germanic Hang, meaning slope (retained in the the
expression "with a hang to," meaning with a tendency towards), than with the
customary "suspend". It certainly makes more sense than my childhood picture
of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as an oversized version of Grandpa's
hanging baskets.